NetDynam 2.0

[a slightly rant-like post, with inspiration from some of our more outlandish and nauseating local public speakers and spruikers, e.g. alan bond, piers ackerman, miranda devine, and andrew bolt ]

recently i lamented on the list that the majority of us in the land of oz were not likely to put up much complaint other than complaint itself when government and/or big business threaten to take over our lives or encroach on civil liberties, our so-called ‘rights’ to privacy and so on. i mean in the light of “the threat of terrorism” (now that “communism” does not hold us all in its thrall of scaredydom), the previous govt here put sniffer dogs on the streets. they also prevented people from publicly expressing their disapproval of bush coming to town, spending many of our tax dollars on enormous surveillance cameras in downtown sydney – for our own protection of course. meanwhile, people line up at hospitals to be seen, and the river systems on which we all depend for something we can’t do without are being sucked dry… for me, govt promises of “we will cut taxes” has a hollow ring to it, when they spend the taxes i would willingly give, on items that do not benefit anyone except those who have enough income to avoid paying what they should in the first place… and i say the ability to control and survey the media, and other means of public and private communication does not benefit the public in any way.
to me, there will always be criminals – but it depends on who makes the laws as to who or what acts are deemed as ‘criminal’. i would rather put up with petty criminals and burglars (which btw i may not need to put up with if 1) smack was supplied by govt, 2) poor or unemployed people were given a place to live and a living income, and 3) advertisers were not paid as much by rich companies to entice us to desire and think we need more crap in order to make us feel better about ourselves) than the big corporate criminals and government criminals who sometimes indirectly are allowed to get away with murder, or at least a whole pile of booty earned off the back of their poor gullible workers who dutifully complain when their company cannot employ them anymore since they cannot make enough profit off them to enable their profligate and eminently enviable lifestyles to continue in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed.

but then those with the wherewithal – either in brains, aesthetic skills, or financial backing – are occasionally called upon to show their cards. and right on cue, after me saying we are not about to do anything down here.. well one of us has flown the coop to do his crowing, over to europe and various bunkers (such as iceland) i don’t doubt… julian assange thinks it about time to release a whole pile of documents to the media. just to see what they will make of it. naturally, he didn’t give them to the SMH (sydney morning herald), but the SMH had to get in on some of the act, and have posted a mashed-up video with some editorial comment by the ed. see this video article from today’s SMH for example for the local take on the matter.

but probably better to check out the guardian UK who have a video of assange defending his decision to release the documents.

here is thewikileaks link posted previously on netdynam – but i’m guessing maybe you won’t be able to get a service there for a while…

and now, today, dick smith, notable self-proclained capitalist, entrepreneur and start-up businessman responsible for dick smith electronics stores nationwide…. uses his spare cash for amusing (to me) advertisements in the local murdoch press…

it’s on another matter, content-wise, but it is another approach to the “what’s to be done” lament i often intone…

[well, i will not try inserting a photo into this post this time - a link will have to do.   but then...]

the thing is, we made the trip over here to adelaide (again) from sydney last week. if you go the shortest route, the drive itself, i.e. actual drive-time, takes 18 hours. usually we drive about 6 hours every day, stopping for lunch and a wander in the middle. and, since we do not like driving at night (nothing to see), we usually take about 3 days and two nights to get here. but, also it is now winter and the days are shorter, and as well we decided to go via broken hill and check out various backwaters along the way, and seeing as this entailed using some unsealed roads and also stopping regularly to take photographs, this time the trip took us about 5 days… lessee, we left on the saturday, and arrived in adelaide on the following friday… OK, 6 days.

so far i have uploaded some of the recent shots to my flickr ‘photostream’, but i have not really had enough time to edit properly, hence it is a little untidy. i tend to take a few shots of the same objects at different angles and distances… oh yeah, now, this has been occasioned as well, by my trialing of the lastest acquisition, a fixed focal length 50mm lens. it takes me back to college days and the 35mm pentax, sigh. now i have a digital SLR camera though, and use a canon EOS body. yes, but normally these days, with the lens that comes with the camera, i can stay in virtually the same place and merely adjust the focal length to get diffferent framing options. now, i have to walk about the place. the benefit is apparently cleaner crisper shots, so i had to test this out. also, there are some shots i’ve uploaded to flickr that are pretty similar in content but i’ve wanted to test-change the aperture. so later on i will delete some of the repetitious ones.

earlier i wrote a very nice succinct blather about what i have done in the interstices of ‘not posting here’, and this post was meant to be a pointer to the fact that i have not been entirely idle. at the same time, into this post, i also wanted to insert a advertorial shot, a teaser, but this ole theme did not like that at all, and not knowing that i would be treated to a blank screen upon attempting to insert, i blithely tried to do the inserting after an easy upload as usual… after which, the blank screen and no recourse assailed me. my photo? or wordpress 3 and this theme combined? nobody knows.

meanwhile, perhaps a link to the photo in the medai gallery will sufiice… also i’d better “save draft” first….

here is the URL from our media library anyway….

(Pwn (below: Various pronunciations) is a leetspeak slang term derived from the verb “own”, as meaning to appropriate or to conquer to gain ownership. The term implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the Internet-based video game culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., “You just got pwned!”). It was popular among Counter-Strike gamers before spreading through the more general Internet world. The past tense and past participle, pwned, may also be spelled pwnd, pwn’d, pwn3d, pwnt, poned, pawned, or powned. Source: Wikipedia )

Enterprising parodists on May 19 created a Twitter account and feed to mock BP, BPGlobalPR.

Chris Matyszczyk reports (5/26) from CNET,

CNN did contact BP and asked the company whether it might feel its image was being polluted by this rogue global PR force. BP reportedly said it had seen it, but was sure that people would realize it’s not really the company’s work.

Perhaps this underestimates people’s notions of what is and isn’t possible in today’s often ugly, cynical world.

Still, I know there will be sticklers among you who will attempt to invoke Twitter’s fake pages policy. It reads that impersonators “should not be the exact name of the subject of the parody, commentary, or fandom; to make it clearer, you should distinguish the account with a qualifier such as ‘not,’ ‘fake’ or ‘fan.’”

It’s unlikely Twitter will get too picky about this, given that it gets some nice PR (happy to help, as always, chaps) out of it all, and given that BP seems unlikely to complain. BP has made its first wise PR move in allowing this site to gush black humor while the nation’s beaches are threatened by a far more painful darkness.

90,000+ followers, and counting.

Sometime in the next few days, BPGlobalPR’s following will surpass in number BP’s number of employees worldwide.

BP America’s Twitter following? 8,000 or so.

Although the official feed doesn’t offer any black humor, it’s funny in a different way.

Following from my previous post about methods for learning more about people encountered on the internet, The New York Times today features an article The Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Off-line (Laura M. Holson; NYT 5-8:2010).

While participation in social networks is still strong, a survey released last month by the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half the young adults questioned had become more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago — mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry.

They are more diligent than older adults, however, in trying to protect themselves. In a new study to be released this month, the Pew Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves. “Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior. “Now you are responsible for everything.”

One interesting question raised by the article–but not addressed–concerns how investigations into online ‘reputation,’ are framed by investigators.

In this article from Septmeber 2009, How HR Professionals Analyze Your Facebook Profile, author Damian Davila Rojas mentions a key finding from a Harris Interactive poll of HR professionals,

The findings were more likely to get candidates rejected than hired: 35% of HR professionals said social networking content had caused them to eliminate a candidate, while only 18% reported deciding to employ someone based on a profile.

There’s a graphic presented to represent the negative reasons for rejecting a job candidate based in their online data.

Of more interest to me is the positive graphic because it begs the question of how positive data is framed.

Here are the top three categories:

50% Got a good feel for the candidate’s personality, could see a good fit within the company culture

39% Job candidate’s background information supported their professional qualifications for the job

39% Job candidate’s site conveyed a professional image

Item #2 is the only element subject to neutral verification. Whereas item #1 begs the question about framing and instrumental approach, and, item #3 does the same while pointing in the direction of normative practices. Also, item #3, with respect to Facebook, can only mean a professional image within the limitations set by Facebook. This includes all the data from friends which flows into the person’s Facebook home page.

Hiring practices vary greatly. They can be very subjective and are subject to hidden cognitive biases. For example, the hunch is more a problem to be eliminated than a valuable instinct in this area.

Social media presents data about a person’s social network. This is not off limits to the hiring professional. Yet, this realm of data raises interesting questions.

i’ve been doing some tutoring at the university of new south wales this semester, courtesy of P who now works there in the department of ‘english, media and the performing arts’ (empa! empa!). so many young people these days want to be media journalists or contributors to the media, but i ask, where are the jobs?
anyway, that is not the university’s look-out. if people want to undertake a course in media studies and journalism, then, given the room, they will accept all comers – and the more popular the course, the higher the marks they can demand for entry requirements. but then, exam marks mean little these days with the higher school certificate being pretty much understood by coaching companies everywhere, even some of the high schools themselves… so you do not get a necessarily brighter more engaged type of student, rather, you tend to get those who have been trained to achieve high marks in exams.
be that as it may, the cohort seems to be comprised pretty evenly of serious scholars of media journalism, and some young people who thought it might be a good thing to take at uni. notably, they all write pretty well too.
anyway, right now, it’s time for them to be putting the finishing touches to their first minor assignment, a “human interest story” complete with appropriate/complementary and self-taken photo. earlier this semester, they were asked to make a trial posting so that if they were unfamiliar with the technology of blogs, they could get some figuring-out done before this, their first assessed work, was due. by tomorrow night, all of the posts should have been made, and then we have the task of making some sort of feedback and grading of them all….
they are all aware that this stuff is on the open internet, and some of the issues surrounding their stories, photos and interviews concern privacy and identity – will their subjects want their faces on the internet, or want their names cited, especially if the story concerns somewhat intimate details of their lives? and, i wonder whether any of the stories will captivate my interest from the beginning – something i tried to stress to them: the photo and opening lead sentence has to grab the reader’s attention, has to make them want to read on to answer questions the lead and photo poses for them.
so, anyone is welcome to take a look at the “analysing media communication” blog – and if anything strikes you as needing comment, please feel free to do so! i’m sure some of them would appreciate some outside commentary on what they are trying to do.

What has the internet done to us?

“I can see this thing being marketed to adults.”

[future iPads] “…less of a giant iPhone for old people.”

Well…somebody’s kid; publishing their review–574 views and counting.

Another millenial’s view.

Comment. Them younger peeps want me some robust gadgets and they want it all now! 

iPad will be a big hit. However, as an Apple user for 25+ years, and as a casual observer of Apple, I know enough to wait for the second generation to arrive. This will happen in 12-18 months. I haven’t checked out the full specs, so I’m hoping that its flash drive storage can be augmented via USB. The only other requirement for me personally would be that it can display Adobe Acrobat. This would allow me to read scholarly papers while horizontal. I don’t know why Apple hasn’t licensed Adobe Flash, although I could go and find out. Maybe some combination of dollars and security figure into this odd deficit.  

iPad connotation?

The scene used here has been redeployed many times in other parodies. Still, this works for me and is headed to viral heights.

Whereas the following video has already made rounds years ago.